Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

Most people want to wipe out deficits in both federal and state governments by making budget cuts rather than raising taxes. I want to make cuts and not raise taxes also, but is it a realistic goal? The co-chairmen of Obama's bipartisan deficit reduction commission offered a draft blueprint for wiping out some of the deficits last week. Among the spending cuts proposed and the savings by 2015 as reported by LA Times: 20.4 billion by freezing federal employees' salary for 3 years; 13.2 billion by cutting federal workforce by 10%; 4.6 billion by slowing the growth of foreign aid; 16 billion by eliminating all earmarks; 9.2 billion by freezing noncombat military pay for 3 years; 20 billion by cutting military procuremnt by 15%.

I would go along with all those above. But even the easiest one of them all, earmarks, have defenders in Congress. Obviously lobbysts and unions will be up at arms and people will complain that it will hurt our defense etc. Obama can help himself among independents by supporting these cuts, putting himself more toward the center. But the job cuts will not help him in the near term because unemployment is his achilles heel right now. The report also wants to eliminate all tax deductions and lower the tax rate and thus simplified the tax code. I am for that also. There is an increase in Medicare payments by the bendficiaries in the proposal. There is also a suggestion to increase the age at which retirees can start drawing social security. Again I agree with these. Again these will be met with stiff opposition and unlikely to pass Congress after all the lobbying are done.

It is the same situation in the state level. Everybody wants spending cuts but when surveyed the majority do not want cuts to schools, transportation, medicaid. These are the biggest parts of the state budget. So if you don't want to cut them, where are you going to cut enough to make a difference? In the long term we do have to decrease government workforce, salaries, and especially pensions. It used to be that you take a government job at a lower salary than in the private sector and get better pensions and benefits. But now the salaries negotiated by the unions (which contributes to campaign of politicians who vote on salary spending) have made public work much better than similar positions in private sector. So we have to change that but there is not enough political will to do so now. It will take years, if ever, to make the changes.